Reviews

October 8, 2009

The More They Stay the Same: William Manchester’s The Death of a President 1

by Lydia Kiesling

The Death of a President, unsurprisingly, is pure hagiography, but that’s actually the large part of its charm.

September 30, 2009

Top 20 Alternative: Manjushree Thapa’s The Tutor of History 5

by Sonya Chung

There is certainly something to be said for heady novels written by women, when so much of “women’s fiction” is about inner emotional lives and domestic relationships. But it does make me ask the question of why we write and why we read.

September 28, 2009

The Impish Delight of Edward Gorey 2

by Bezalel Stern

Two assumptions are often made about the magnificent writer and illustrator Edward Gorey. First, that he is British. Second, that he is long dead.

September 15, 2009

Forgotten Visionary: The Art of Charles Burchfield 0

by Buzz Poole

Burchfield died in 1967, just as the word “psychedelic” was entering the cultural lexicon, but his paintings quake with hallucinatory glory that has nothing to do with politics or culture.

September 3, 2009

It’s Not You, It’s Me: Thoughts on Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs 24

by Edan Lepucki

We all came out of Lorrie Moore’s overcoat–or her frog hospital, her bonehead Halloween costume.

September 2, 2009

The Lion, The Witch and Ishiguro 3

by Lydia Kiesling

The surprise in a large part of Kazuo Ishiguro’s work is that he changes the very quality of the world in some subtle but deeply alarming way.